


Outside of this Space-Time Frame, We are One and the Same

by LightDescending



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Chronic Illness, Erotica, Fluff, Intimacy, M/M, Massage, Physics, Post-Episode: e029 Subway, Questions about the afterlife, theories of time and space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 06:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1142453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightDescending/pseuds/LightDescending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is theorized that from a perspective external to our present universe, time occurs simultaneously at all points; it has no linear structure, no sequence. It simply is.<br/>“Keep me here.” Cecil whispers into Carlos, murmurs soft into the creased point where jaw and earlobe and neck and skull meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside of this Space-Time Frame, We are One and the Same

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from "I Know This" by Rachel Kann, from Episode 10: Feral Dogs. Incidentally, this is one of my favourite weather segments from one of my favourite episodes.  
> An additional weather song mentioned is "Poor In Love" by Destroyer, from Episode 29: Subway.

It is theorized that from a perspective external to our present universe, time occurs simultaneously at all points; it has no linear structure, no sequence. It simply _is_.

_“Keep me here.” Cecil whispers into Carlos, murmurs soft into the creased point where jaw and ear and neck and skull meet._

 

Past and present and future, after all, are constructs. By the same theory, everything that has already happened, is occurring, or will be, all of it, is still ongoing. Each moment living forever. The concepts of growth and decay become irrelevant.

_“What do you mean?” A request for clarification, not so much spoken as exhaled. The question matters. Cecil has never been good at asking for things, often needs prompting: an indication that he’s not a burden. He’s working on it. Carlos doesn’t mind._

 

These are thoughts that others at his high school found disturbing, discomfiting in some way. Not so for Carlos: he was enamoured with the premise almost immediately. There was something soothing in the notion that beauty and pain could coexist eternally, presumably in balance; that existence was not pre-destined, per say, merely… observably stable.

_Forehead migrating from neck to shoulder, an easy diagonal slide. Cecil takes a breath and Carlos feels the cool inhalation against his chest, prickling through the hair there. He waits patiently; Cecil won’t make eye-contact while he asks. But it’s the question that signifies._

 

Once, before he’d heard this theory, he had sobbed through the night at the terrifying thought that somehow all the energy that makes up a person dissipates upon death. That there are thoughts and feelings and memories tangled in neuron connections that simply snap, or unravel, and vanish forever. You can never really know a person, he’d reasoned, because the matter that makes them up, the biochemical wonder of a _human_ , it will end and leave questions behind. Someday it will end, and all that was them will be gone – parts of them forever beyond reach, rendered inaccessible. But not so, not if time is relative to the point from which it is perceived.

_“Tonight I don’t care if I come,” Cecil says. “I don’t need it. If it happens, it happens, but… I want to… I want you to try and keep me here for as long as possible. Just like this.”_

 

And what if there _is_ such a thing as life after death? What forms could it take?

_Their shirts are already discarded; they’ve been kissing, slow and languid, for the better part of ten minutes. They lie side by side, aligned, well within each other’s orbitals. “Hmm... of course. Yeah.”_

 

A heaven wherein the soul exists and is preserved perfectly in photons and ultraviolet, carbon-copied onto eternity with all aspects of ‘self’ blissfully intact?

_“But I’ve got my own condition, Cecil.”_

 

Reincarnation and enlightenment, the energy signature of a person returning and returning and returning again until at last, finally, ultimately suffering is overcome and there is a return to the source?

 

“ _Yes?”_

 

Something more elemental, the aspects of a person divisible like atoms recycled in other matter, becoming part of the greater whole but without consciousness?

_Carlos whispers gentle into the shell of Cecil’s ear, cards fingers through his hair.  He's been subdued so far this evening.“Tonight I take care of you. Okay?” Cecil shivers._

 

Could it be possible that the afterlife _is_ external to the universe, and the end to suffering that humankind seeks is only this: perspective?

_“O-okay.” Cecil’s voice chips in the place that it’s usually smooth. Carlos feels unspeakably fond. At the same time, he feels… careful._

 

Consider: memory never dies. Thoughts, words, emotions, interactions, reactions; all of them, to an external observer, preserved perfectly. Never lost. Never corroded. No dissipation, no scattering.

_Points of light like interference patterns behind Carlos’s eyelids when he closes them and leans in, lips parting, mouths meeting, warm, open, welcoming. Fingertips tracing the skin above the waistband of Cecil’s pants, conscious of how he’s already responding to touch, jumpy like he’s trying to phase out of the space he occupies._

_Carlos draws closer in response, Cecil almost desperate in how he opens up to that contact (it’s been so long) and Carlos gently turns Cecil onto his back, lifting up to straddle the air just above. Air electric between them, warm and bright. The human body might very well exude a bioelectric field that can be felt, like how the body uses proprioception to locate itself in space relative to itself. Hand to arm, arm to leg, et cetera, even in pitch blackness. Bodies and limits, where one ends and the other begins, the exclusion principle. Matter not occupying more than one space simultaneously, but wouldn’t it be nice?_

_Cecil warm beneath him, hands reaching up to smooth along Carlos’s shoulders and down his back, like reverence. And also like an invitation. Still, Carlos lingers._

 

Thermodynamic laws intact because the net balance of energy in the universe cannot decline, not if time is contained by itself. Entropy, the gradual increase of disorder in the universe (theorized to explain the human experience of time’s passage), not counteracted but extraneous to the system. Nothing meaningless because it all happens all at once.

_The current round of antibiotic treatment has been going on for weeks, and Cecil is feeling almost back to normal… although he insists that his adherence to a daily chanting ritual is also contributing. Carlos reins in any skepticism; he’s just glad that the worst of the symptoms have abated. Fatigue is bad enough; hypersensitivity and joint pain are worse, and there are others. Light sensitivity. Ringing in the ears. Flashes, like figures, in the corners of Cecil’s vision._

_Part of the frustration – the fear – for Cecil is that he’s never certain whether he’s experiencing a relapse or if it’s just_ Night Vale _doing_ Night Vale Things _. Like when there was a bout of Roaming Narcolepsy that decided to start flirting with a low pressure system coming in from the west. Cecil wasn’t sure if the headaches and slips into unconsciousness were a result of that disastrous Psychosomatic Weather System or… well… signs that Lyme Disease was making yet another comeback._

_“You’ll tell me if anything hu- if anything is too much, right?”_

_Cecil opens his eyes and looks at Carlos, level and steady. “I’ll tell you. You don’t have to worry, Carlos, I’m alright.” For an instance Cecil digs his fingertips into Carlos’s back and_ pulls _, a slow drag down the muscles in his back. Carlos groans. “I promise.”_

 

Perspective. And the ability for once to see clearly.

To understand that somewhere, somehow, everything has always had a meaning. Every action and reaction. All the suffering in the world, and all the joy as well.

_“I love you so much,” Carlos blurts, and Cecil smiles, ducks his head towards his chest like he’s embarrassed. Carlos chases Cecil’s mouth down with his own, carefully lowering his weight down onto his elbows; he supports himself still just above. There’s that electric warmth between them still, undeniable. Thrilling._

_“I love you too,” Cecil gasps when they part at last, palms against the sides of Carlos’s face, and then Carlos presses sloppy kisses along his jaw and neck._

 

Once Cecil travelled years in the span of three minutes and twenty one seconds. _Why does everybody sing along when we built this city on ruins?_ Not ruins, though – scenes of births, deaths, wars, discoveries, kisses – _kisses like these, neck, clavicle, sternum -_ plagues, knives, cold empty void. Flickering and dancing, Cecil had said, like a shadow puppet show against a screen – visible, but not. Silhouettes and impressions. _The navel of the world_ : an awesome description.

_Carlos’s tongue trails down Cecil’s quaking skin from infrasternal notch through lenea alba, dips into his belly button. He chuckles when Cecil laughs, startled, and transmutes that laugh into another moan when he nibbles along to Cecil’s iliac crest._

_“I’m saving up.” Carlos hears from above him._

_“Mm?”_

_“For next time it gets bad. I’m saving up.” Cecil’s voice is shaky, and when Carlos looks up he’s got an arm flung over his eyes. There’s not a lot he can say to that. A gentle scrape of teeth against the prominence of Cecil’s hipbone, and Cecil jerks, his mouth dropping open._

 

It seems more like the Subway was… not a photograph, not a projection… more like the concept of entanglement, Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’. The quantum link between two particles, in separate places in the universe, where the behaviour of one particle mirrors the other. Something like that, only the Subway was entangled with… what, something outside the knowable Universe? Thinking about the possibilities only makes Carlos feel small.

_Cecil’s hand falls against the rumpled sheets and Carlos walks his fingers up. They tangle together briefly before Carlos slips fingers up, palm sliding against palm, and tip-taps against Cecil’s wrists lightly. He hums against the juncture of Cecil’s hip-meeting-denim, the dip of shadow angling towards his groin, and tugs at his waistband again with his other hand. Cecil’s head falls back against the pillow with a soft ‘thwump’._

_They’re always careful. They’ve heard that it is possible transmission could happen through bodily fluids. They try not to take risks. It makes Cecil feel guilty sometimes. It makes him tense._

_“Turn over?” Carlos mouths into that shadowy dip._

 

And he knows it’s faulty science to assume that quantum mechanics would function the same way outside the universe as inside– but still. If there’s anything that Night Vale has proven conclusively, it’s that science is just as fallible as ever. That the only thing he can be certain of is that there’s no such thing as certainty; that time doesn’t work here, so why should theoretical physics?

And yet the idea: to see time not subjectively, but in a state of perfect objectivity. Had Cecil approached that state? Gotten a taste of it, like how the tongue can distinguish on a molecular level the difference between sugar and artificial sweetener?

_Cecil’s skin has just the barest hint of salt to it that Carlos can still taste on the tip of his tongue, and he smells like coffee and sagebrush and dust – good, rich, earthy smells. He moves gingerly, Carlos once more supporting himself to let the other man twist around. Cecil folds his arms and rests his forehead against them._

_Carlos readjusts, sliding his knees up and straddling Cecil’s hips. He hunches so that he can better angle his thumbs into the hollows of Cecil’s lower back and push gently, in and up – “Mmm, yes…” He hears Cecil groan appreciatively, and yup, he’s definitely going to do this more often.  So long as the nerve pain (residual or no) isn’t too bad, so long as there’s permission given…_

_Each vertebra of Cecil’s spine passes smoothly between his thumbs, like they’re under silk. His hands stroke out over ribs, shoulder blades, down along Cecil’s arms before returning to the back. “I’m not very good at this,” he confesses. “It’s not my forte…”_

_“Carlos, it’s perfect.” Cecil says into the pillow, voice coming out muffled. He sighs happily when Carlos kneads gently at the muscle groups around his shoulders and neck, varying the pressure as he goes. There’s a spot, behind Cecil’s ear, where Carlos knows he’s particularly sensitive, and he gives it attention. The noises Cecil makes in response…_

_He rubs his hands methodically back down towards the dip in Cecil’s spine just above his hips, trying very hard not to notice the way Cecil has lifted them slightly off the mattress. He can’t blame him – his own groin feels heavy, weighty, hot, insistent. He lifts, reaches around the front of Cecil’s body, and pops the button at his fly. Cecil whines, tugs his zipper down, shimmies around and gets absolutely nowhere fast. It makes Carlos chuckle suddenly, short stuttering sounds, and then they’re both gone, laughter bouncing around the room._

_When the laughter slows Carlos manages, “Back o-over again?” To his ears his voice sounds tinny. The room feels amped up, electro-static._

_They work Cecil’s pants off in increments, and Carlos has a moment to think; to plan. He_ feels _things and he thinks he’s starting to get what Cecil means. What he wanted._

 

Keep me here. Make this time a landmark, a beacon in my mind. Psychologists, neuropsychologists, doctors… there is a general agreement among scientists of the mind that pain lingers longer in the human memory than sweetness. That it is easier to recall personal moments of discomfort, of fear, of anger, of jealousy, before remembering moments of joy.

For each atom: a nucleus, made up of neutrons and protons. Positive and neutral charges. These give the atom its mass, the concentrated heart around which a cloud of electrons (negative charge) forms.

Imagine a standard sized football field. Take a single pea, and place it in the centre of the field. That is the nucleus. The field is the cloud of electrons. Do you have a sense of the scale?

Why is it that the mundane and delightful sometimes seem so small in comparison to the vastness of our sadness? Of our pain?

Keep me here, at the core of us. Clasp me tightly to this moment and remind me that this is the center. That our closeness is our center. Make times like this into points on a line that I can string out like beads of light when it feels like too much to bear. When I forget that somewhere, there has to be a place to see from where it all makes sense.

I believe this because I must.

_Cecil turns over again and reaches up, taking Carlos’s face between his hands. He crushes their mouths together, kissing hard and messy. His lips a firebrand against Carlos’s, like plasma. Carlos sets his hands roaming once again, stroking over naked skin, tapping down limbs before skimming back again._

_He envisions a particle field overlaid onto Cecil’s form and sets about to quicken every part of it, repeating touches, revisiting areas with mouth, hands. He keeps careful distance between their groins to avoid over stimulus but otherwise experiments with weight, pressure, motion. By now in their relationship he’s got at least a rough idea of what Cecil likes, and gently coaxes out responses. Contiguity: stimulus and reaction become linked with repetition. Stimulus: a light bite here. Reaction: a choked back cry, a ripple head to toe. Stimulus: fingertips to skin. Response: shiver._

_Carlos reaches between them and trails one hand up the inside of Cecil’s thigh, palms him through the cotton of his boxer briefs. Cecil cries out and Carlos presses closer, doesn’t move his hand, doesn’t apply friction, just cups above and around Cecil’s erection with warmth, like safety. When he kisses Cecil he realizes the other man is shaking minutely; when he pulls away he sees that Cecil is weeping, softly._

_Immediately he jerks back, takes his hands away and tries to kneel up, but Cecil shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut, pulls Carlos back with one hand on the back of his neck and the other snaking up to grab at Carlos’s side. “I’m alright, I’m alright,” he whispers. “Carlos, I’m alright. It just… it feels… I feel…”_

 

From somewhere outside the Universe:

Carlos is entering Night Vale for the first time.

Cecil is shaking his hand for the first time.

Carlos is _not_ calling for personal reasons.

Cecil is gushing, on-air, over the voicemail Carlos has left him explaining that clocks in Night Vale aren’t real.

Carlos is telling a crowd of onlookers, “We have nothing to fear!”

Cecil has his head on Carlos’s shoulder, Carlos’s hand on his knee.

Carlos is leaning over the gear shift to kiss him – just once.

Cecil is declaring there’s somewhere he’d rather be right now.

Carlos is adding x’s and o’s to his text messages and feeling twenty years younger.

They are here. They are now.

_“You make me feel_ meaningful _.” Cecil gasps out, and Carlos’s heart leaps._

 

They have individual futures, somewhere, perhaps together and maybe not (unknowable from here); but from outside the universe…?

_They come together, they kiss, they rest in an entanglement of limbs. The warmth of skin against skin and body to body defiance against the exclusion principle; sparking nerve endings and synapse and energy; mouths and breath and hearts-beating-hard next to each other; arousal-pleasure-attraction-need-love like infinity barely constrained in the ancient star-stuff of their bodies:_

 

Simultaneity across all points of matter.  

_We’re a part, not apart._

This is always.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a scientist. The theories / models of the universe used here have been gleaned from "60 Second Science: Instant Egghead Guide to the Universe" by JR Minkel and the Scientific American, or from conversations with friends who are taking University level physics courses, or from brief perusals of the magazines at my workplace. Regardless: I apologize for any errors; please feel free to point them out to me! I don't understand atoms. I barely understand myself. 
> 
> Also: I researched the symptoms, treatment, and other effects of Lyme Disease (and in particular, persistent Lyme Disease) at canlyme.com, which proved extremely comprehensive. However, again, I may have made errors and corrections are more than welcome. 
> 
> Finally: thank you so much for reading. As is usual with my fanfiction, I felt like I took a risk in writing this (stylistically, content-wise, etc.) Feedback and comments are appreciated.


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